


softer and more beautiful

by untiltheveryend



Series: 12 Days of Carmilla [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: 12 Days of Carmilla, Christmas Carols, F/F, christmas drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:13:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untiltheveryend/pseuds/untiltheveryend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve Christmasy drabbles, written for the <a href="http://ellianderjoy.tumblr.com/post/103922602906/hey-there-creampuffs-so-i-was-thinking-since">12 Days of Carmilla</a> drabble challenge.</p><p>“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ” - Norman Vincent Peale</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One: Christmas Carols

There are moments where Laura finds it hard to believe that any of the weird stuff that happened in her first half-year of university actually _happened_. Moments when it is so easy to lean back against the steady weight of Carmilla’s body, and pretend like they are just two normal nineteen year olds. In love, in the quiet way that means more to Laura than any amount of noise.

She is comfortable in the softest of ways, warm where she is pressed up against Carmilla, ears filled with the slightly static sound of the analog radio Carmilla likes to listen to.

She is humming along now, and the slight vibration of her chest is so subtle Laura might have missed it if they weren’t pressed so close together.

‘You should sing,’ Laura says, with the crackly voice she always gets when she is tired.

Carmilla just smiles, moves to press her lips against Laura’s jaw. 

She doesn’t sing, or even hum, but she sways them a little, honey slow with the music. It’s a Christmas song that Laura doesn’t know, an old recording that reminds her of afternoons in the dim front room at her Grandmother’s house, soft music playing on her scratchy old record player.

The song winds down, another starts. Laura shifts a little, and then Carmilla is standing up, pulling Laura with her. 

‘Wha-’ Laura begins, and then cuts herself off as Carmilla slips her hand around Laura’s waist, eases them both into the rhythm of the song.

For a second she concentrates on the music, the words, but then her attention is drawn inescapably back to the way that Carmilla is swaying her gently, the way her hands are running up and down her back. She tips her head forward, buries her face in Carmilla’s shoulder.

After a moment, Carmilla starts singing. It’s soft, and it shouldn’t be as beautiful as it is. But she is singing just for her, just for Laura, and it feels more intimate than just about anything else anyone has done for her.

The song is in German, which normally Laura thinks sounds harsh. Somehow, the way Carmilla is singing transforms the words into something softer. 

The song winds to an end, and they come to a stop with it. For a moment they just stand there, motionless and pressed up against one another. And then Carmilla steps back, turns back to the bed, but Laura catches her wrist before she can slip away from the moment.

‘Thank you,’ she tells her, soft but sure.

‘Anytime, love.’


	2. Day Two: Tinsel

It starts as a total accident. Laura goes shopping to celebrate making it through her soul-harrowing first semester of uni, and comes back with a new reindeer sweater and several bags stuffed to the brim with all things glittery. 

She dumps it all on Carmilla’s bed because she needs to make hers, that’s all. It isn’t supposed to be a declaration of war, really it isn’t.

~

Laura is only out for a minute, just down the hall to receiving her weekly brownie ration from Perry, so when she walks back through the door the last thing she is expecting is to be confronted by an angry, glittery vampire. It’s pretty much all she can do not to laugh.

‘There is glitter all through my bed, Hollis,’ Carmilla grits out, and Laura is torn between being very glad she isn’t laughing and the overwhelming desire to make a Twilight joke. She refrains, just. 

‘I’m really sorry, it must have been the bag of tinsel that I bought,’ she explains. 

Carmilla just scowls at her. 

Laura steps closer, reaches out to snag a scrap of gold out of Carmilla’s hair. This earns her a frustrated huff, and she has to fight to keep herself from grinning.

‘I am taking a shower,’ Carmilla snaps. ‘And don’t think I’m going to forget about this.’

Laura lasts until she hears the water running before the laughter bubbles out of her, and honestly, she’s proud of her restraint. 

The sight of Carmilla with streaks of glitter on her face and tinsel caught in her hair would be too much for pretty much anyone, she thinks.

~

She really honestly forgets about it, she does. 

Until she is running across campus, late to meet Danny, and she realises that she is trailing tinsel from both her bag and her cardigan. She sighs, and stuffs it in her bag, and thinks well, that’s that. 

It isn’t.

~

She finds it everywhere, for weeks. Gold tinsel stuffed into the bottom of one of her gumboots. Silver tinsel in the never-used front pocket of her backpack. Bright purple tinsel plaited into her favourite scarf. 

She wakes up one morning to find Carmilla twisting the stuff into her hair and pushes her out of bed, before she laughs and pulls her back up off the floor.

It’s kind of cute, she thinks later. And then she sighs, and shakes tinsel out of yet another notebook. 

~

Danny thinks it’s weird, tells her as much as she stutteringly tries to explain the situation after Danny confusedly asks her why she has a strand of tinsel tucked into the back pocket of her jeans.

LaF thinks it’s funny (of course), and Perry just tells her ‘Don’t get that all over the floor, I just vacuumed in here.’

Laura thinks the whole thing is a bit petty for a 300 year old philosophy major, and she tells Carmilla as much.

Carmilla just rolls her eyes and smiles. 

‘You started it, cupcake.’


	3. Day Three: Christmas Sweaters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made christmas sweaters tragic. everything about these two fuckers is tragic. i’m so done.

In the second week of December, all it does is rain. Classes are over, so everyone just barricades themselves in their rooms and refuses to venture out into the small lake that once resembled the Silas campus.

Carmilla mostly sleeps, and Laura spends her time curled up by the window in one of her oversized Christmas sweaters, drinking her way through cup after cup of cocoa.

When it rains, she always ends up thinking about her mother. It’s like muscle memory, these days. As familiar as breathing.

~

Days slip by with as much urgency as the raindrops sliding down their window. She marks time with her own heartbeat, and the soft kisses Carmilla presses to her cheek each time she comes over to pour herself a glass of blood or grab a soda.

‘Are you…?’ Carmilla asks. It is more an invitation than a question though. 

Laura just shakes her head, and Carmilla bends down to press three fingertips against the soft skin at the nape of Laura’s neck, brush her nose against Laura’s cheekbone.

She goes back to where she has made herself a nest in Laura’s bed, gently folds open the book she has been reading. 

The book could be a hundred years old, Laura realises.

She goes back to watching the rain.

~

The sun comes out on Thursday, and it half blinds her. She turns away from the window, and she isn’t sure if what she is feeling is relief or regret. She stumbles across the room to curl up next to Carmilla, keeps her lips pressed hard together. The tears roll down her cheeks anyway.

Carmilla does nothing but hold her, not in the way you hold something you are afraid you will lose, but rather like something she can’t bear not to touch.

It is all Laura could have asked for.


	4. Day Four: Mistletoe

Of course, out of anything, the thing that Carmilla decides she actually likes about the holiday season is mistletoe.

She snitches some out of one of the tallest trees in campus, and it’s kinda ugly looking and tangled, but she sticks it in her bag and carries it around with her everywhere. 

~

The first time, it catches Laura totally by surprise. She is standing in the kitchen trying to decide if making herself a cheese toastie is worth the effort, when Carmilla slides up next to her looking worryingly pleased with herself.

‘Look,’ she says, pointing upwards. Laura looks up and sees-

‘Is that mistletoe? Why is there mistletoe in here?’

Carmilla just shrugs, steps closer so she can nose her way along Laura’s jawline.

Laura sighs half a laugh, turns her head to give Carmilla a quick kiss. 

‘That’s pathetic, creampuff,’ Carmilla tells her, chasing after her mouth. 

‘I’m hungry!’ Laura tells her, laughs as she turns away to open the fridge.

She should have known it wouldn’t end there.

~

It’s around the fourth time Carmilla catches her under the stuff that she starts to think it isn’t a coincidence. Which means that either she has a friendly bunch of mistletoe following her around (she wouldn’t put it past the alchemy club in all honesty), or Carmilla is playing dirty.

She catches her at it, in the end, sees her slip the stuff out of her bag and reaches out to grab her hand with an admittedly very loud ‘Ha!’.

‘Way to give me a heart attack,’ Carmilla grumbles. Laura just grins at her in victory.

‘You know you don’t have to carry around mistletoe to get me to kiss you, right?’ she teases.

Carmilla rolls her eyes. 

‘But where’s the fun in that, cupcake?’


	5. Day Five: Fairy Lights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is really short, sorry!

Half the school leaves for Christmas in the third week of December, and it leaves Laura rattling around in a space that feels far too big for her.

LaF and Perry stay, apparently they stay every year. But Danny and the Summer Society girls all leave, and most of the Zeta’s, including Kirsh, go as well. So Laura is kinda lonely, and everything is far too empty.

Before everyone leaves, they all spend a whole afternoon stringing fairly lights into the leafless trees in the quad, though. So when Laura walks across campus later that week, it feels magical in its emptiness, like the part in a fairytale where the whole world falls asleep. Nobody left but her.

~

At night, it’s stunning. 

She can see the lights from the window in her door room, half obscured by the edge of the Literature building, but just as wonderful. 

When Carmilla catches her staring out the window she laughs and says, ‘Aren’t I supposed to be the mysterious one, cupcake?’

Laura just smiles at her, pulls her down for a kiss, and tells her, ‘Fairy lights are more magical than stars.’

Maybe that is naive, because in the scheme of the universe, the strings of christmas lights in the trees outside their window are nearly inconsequential, while the stars in the sky will outlive her by millions of years, but there is a difference between shining bright and shining warm. 

‘I love you,’ Carmilla murmurs against her lips, and Laura has never been more grateful to be small and naive.


	6. Day Six: Christmas Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is one of my faves. also LaFerry (yay)!

The tree is Perry’s idea. She has a couple of the Zeta’s drag one in from the woods, and stick it in a bucket in the room at the end of the floor that is a kitchen on a good day and a lounge at other times. It goes in the corner, between the cracked brown leather couch and the one squishy chair that always has a quilt on it, covering something (it’s best not to ask). 

Perry calls Laura, and Laura drags Carmilla, and of course wherever Perry goes, LaFontaine follows. There’s also a couple other girls from farther down the fall, and a guy that Carmilla seems to recognise with a frown, steering Laura to the other side of the room. 

‘Alright,’ Perry announces, all business as LaF dumps a pile of dusty boxes on the floor in the middle of the room. ‘Let’s get decorating.’

Carmilla sighs, and Laura smiles, and Perry grabs a rag to start dusting off the boxes.

~

Carmilla is an awful decorator, worse than entirely useless. Most of the time, she is attempting to sneakily decorate Laura and entirely ignoring the tree.

‘Carm,’ Laura complains, as she finds another wooden reindeer tucked into the hood of her sweatshirt. ‘This isn’t helping. Cut it out.’

Carmilla nods her head solemnly, and then two minutes later Laura discovers a bauble hanging from her pyjama pants.

‘Stop it!’ she says, and it’s a little shrill, but also a little bit like laughter. Perry glares at them both from across the room. 

Carmilla gives Laura a look that is about a shade away from poking out her tongue, and Laura glares at her. 

‘Stick with decorating the tree, Carm,’ she says, and Carmilla sighs. 

~

Once the rest of the decorations are hung sensibly on branches, Laura lets Carmilla tie a length of sparkling red ribbon into her hair, smiles at the way Carmilla’s fingers brush carefully against her neck. 

Carmilla tangles her fingers through Laura’s, and LaF crawls behind the sofa to switch the lights on, and-

The whole tree just glows.


	7. Day Seven: Gingerbread

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cute af. nuff said.

‘I’m pretty sure the icing isn’t supposed to be this clumpy,’ Carmilla complains.

Laura huffs out a breath, half an expression of total frustration, and half an attempt to blow a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. Carmilla reaches over and tucks it neatly behind her ear. Laura huffs again. 

‘Give it here,’ Laura says, reaching over to snatch the bowl of icing out of Carmilla’s lap. 

It is clumpy. Disastrously so, if Laura is honest. But she pulls open a draw, grabs the third last clean spoon, and starts stirring. 

Carmilla watches her with a look on her face like she’s about to start laughing. Laura glares at her.

‘You could give me a hand, you know,’ Laura tells her.

Carmilla quirks an eyebrow. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

~

It isn’t until the whole thing is just about on the edge of collapse that Carmilla steps in. She’s been sitting on the counter, licking lumpy bloody icing off her fingers like a freaking porn star, watching Laura struggle with her eyebrows raised, like she thinks she could do it so much better. 

Laura just ignores her, concentrates on trying to keep the roof from sliding down the sides, and containing the mess of icing to the least amount of space possible. It’s a losing battle.

She is about to throw a sheet of gingerbread at the wall in frustration when Carmilla’s cool hands slip over hers, and ease the whole thing back into shape. She should be annoyed, but the slight dig of Carmilla’s chin on her shoulder does nothing but loosen the stress that’s collected in the space between her shoulders.

~

‘That thing is an engineering marvel,’ Carmilla drawls, and Laura grins at the slight hint of pride that she catches in Carmilla’s tone. 

‘It’s beautiful,’ Laura says.

Carmilla rolls her eyes. ‘Beautiful. Really?’

Laura just grins back at her. ‘A work of art.’

It isn’t really. It’s a precarious pile of store-bought gingerbread and lumpy icing, partially disguised by a variety of strange Austrian sweets and chocolates that Laura is already itching to taste.

It probably won't last the week, and she is still annoyed at Carmilla for sitting idly by while she ruined the icing, but- 

She loves it.


	8. Day Eight: Candy Canes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I am very very sorry how short this is, tomorrows is extra long I promise!)

Carmilla kisses her, and then leans back with a face full of wrinkled disgust. 

‘You taste gross.’

‘I taste like candy canes,’ Laura corrects her.

Carmilla huffs. ‘Well, it’s gross.’

Laura laughs, makes a face. 

‘Sometimes you taste like blood, Carm. That is what I would call gross.’

Carmilla rolls her eyes, leans in and presses her lips against Laura’s neck, right over her pulse point. ‘Blood is naturally occurring in your body, sweetheart. Unlike corn syrup and peppermint flavouring.’

Laura grumbles wordlessly in disagreement, a little distracted by the way that Carmilla is mouthing her way down her neck.

‘Lucky the rest of you doesn’t taste like the commercialisation of Christmas,’ Carmilla mumbles against her skin, and Laura is never going to get over the fact that this is her life. That the snarky, 300 year old vampire who’s currently got her mouth on Laura’s collarbone, choses to be with her.

Laura drags Carmilla up so they are face to face, grins when Carmilla wrinkles her nose.

‘I love you,’ she tells her.

Carmilla rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, love you too cutie.’


	9. Day Nine: Snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the longest one of them all.

It takes her ten minutes to get her skates laced up. In fact, it takes her so long that she isn’t even finished, and her butt is already numb from sitting on the cold stone bench.

She’s distracted, is the problem, and it’s highly unfair. 

Carmilla skates like she’s flying, carving graceful loops into the ice around Perry and LaF, her posture so relaxed it doesn’t even look like she’s trying.

And so Laura is distracted. And, okay, maybe she is also a little nervous.

‘Need a hand there, cutie?’ Laura’s head jerks up, and Carmilla is right there, easing her fingers away from her skates, deftly lacing them up.

‘Um, thanks,’ Laura says.

Carmilla smiles, and it’s bright enough that you wouldn’t think half an hour ago she’d been whining about having to go skating at all. 

She reaches out two gloved hands, and eases Laura to her feet. They make their way to the edge of the little lake slowly. Carmilla’s hand doesn’t leave Laura’s arm the whole way, and the way her grip is both firm and incredibly light makes a delicate feeling bloom in Laura’s stomach.

By the time they are stepping onto the ice, she has mostly forgotten her nerves. Carmilla swings around so she’s in front of Laura, takes both her hands and smiles again.

‘Ready?’ She asks. Laura nods, a little stiff but it’s there. 

Carmilla takes off backwards, which is really kind of unfair, and Laura just concentrates on keeping her skates steady underneath her, on the reassuring grip of Carmilla’s hands.

They skate a slow loop of the frozen lake, Carmilla carefully navigating around rough patches and other skaters. By the time they have made it three-quarters of the way around, Laura is confident enough to look up from her feet.

It’s beautiful. Everything is grey-grey-black, and there are lights wound into a few of the trees on the close side of the lake, twinkling like stars against the gloomy, overcast sky. Everything is crisp and clear, and the way the light filters through the clouds is casting Carmilla’s pale skin into a kind of perfection. 

~

They skate for long enough that Laura gets warm inside her layers from exertion and laughing, twirling in wobbly circles with LaF while Carmilla and Perry look on like proud Mama’s. 

She falls twice. The first time it’s because she trips on a dip in the ice, and Carmilla doesn’t catch her quite in time to save the knees of her jeans.

The second time, it’s because it starts snowing.

She takes them both down this time, and somehow she ends up on the bottom, with a butt that is no longer just numb but now also wet and cold. She can barely bring herself to care. 

‘Look,’ she breathes.

‘I can see,’ Carmilla snarks, but there is a hint of a smile to the way her lips quirk, and the snowflakes caught in her hair make her look more eternal than she ever has before, Laura thinks.

She kisses her, and their lips are both cold. When they break apart, Laura’s breath is misty and the lake is covered in a dusting of white powder, the whole word transformed from greys to whites.


	10. Day Ten: Christmas Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the dialogue in this is really clunky (ugh) because a) i find LaF really hard to write and b) I didn’t want anyone to misgender anyone else which makes things a tad awkward...
> 
> so. sorry about that.

Perry cooks, starting at about seven in the morning and going on for the whole day. Laura ducks in and out, presenting herself to taste things and fetch things as required and avoiding doing any actual cooking, in the name of her friends ongoing health. 

She runs into LaF in the hallway at one point, and they point around the corner into the kitchen with the kind of solemn look that always means trouble. Laura peeks cautiously, and sees-

‘Is Perry wearing a santa hat?’ she asks, with a certain amount of (understandable) confusion.

‘I put it on her about an hour ago, and she hasn’t noticed yet. Care to join the betting pool?’ Laura shakes her head, peeks around the corner again to watch as Perry frantically stirs about six pots at once, watched by a small crowd of onlookers.

Three of them grin brightly at Laura, and one girl beckons her over, but she just rolls her eyes and turns to go.

‘Your loss,’ LaF calls after her.

~

In the end, she’s glad she didn’t join the nonsense. Because they’re all gathered around the slightly wobbly table, and Perry is starting in on the carving, and she’s still wearing the damn hat. 

About half of the gathered attendants are too busy staring at her to serve themselves.

Laura sighs, gives LaF a look over the table, and then Carmilla reaches over to jiggle the end of Perry’s hat. 

‘Nice hat, Per,’ she comments. A couple of people groan, while most of the bet-takers sit up straight in anticipation.

‘Thank you, Carmilla. LaFontaine gave it to me this morning,’ Perry beams.

This time, the groaning is wide spread. 

LaF starts collecting money, and Laura leans over to kiss Carmilla on the cheek with a grin.

~

Perry’s cooking is divine, and despite the fact that she has only known these people for less than a year, Laura feels at home in the warmth of their company.

LaF and Perry navigate around one another seamlessly, keeping plates stocked and conversation flowing. Laura gets the impression that for them, this is family. It is the happiest she has seen either of them, and probably the happiest she has been herself in as long as she cares to think about. 

Carmilla sits on the edges of things, which is okay, really. She doesn’t eat, which is nice, just sips at some blood LaF got for her, hidden in a takeaway coffee cup. 

It’s just all so weirdly normal, a bizarre meeting of real, normal life with Silas. Turkey dinner eaten alongside human blood in a cup that two days ago, Laura ordered a gingerbread latte in.

It’s a contrast she thinks she could get used to.


	11. Day Eleven: Eggnog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh its too sweet now. stop it.

After dinner is over, they end up in Laura and Carmilla’s room. Perry has to be physically dragged away from the washing up, but then LaF convinces her to cough up a carton of custard and Carmilla provides some really (really) nice whiskey, which means they totally have eggnog.

For the first couple of mouthfuls, Laura isn’t sure if she likes it or hates it. But then Carmilla kisses her with straight whiskey on her lips, and one of those things (the whiskey or the lips) makes the room start spinning, and the whole thing becomes a little more pleasant.

~

Laura stops before any of the rest of them, because the combination of dinner and custard and alcohol is making her stomach feel sluggish, and the last thing she needs is a repeat appearance of any of those things.

Perry and LaF stop drinking around the time Perry starts whining about rap (Laura doesn’t ask). As they leave, she stands in the doorway - two hands keeping her steady within the frame - and watches them all the way down the hallway. 

When they walk they fit together so logically, more than anything Laura has ever seen. 

~

So Perry and LaF leave, and Laura chucks the mostly empty custard carton away, but Carmilla still has her whiskey bottle, halfway empty by now.

She’s innocent in the way she always gets, right before the sad part of drunk. A kind of vulnerability she never otherwise lets show. Laura feels the cool glass of the whiskey bottle in the palm of her hand, thinks that she might like to try it.

Instead, she screws the lid on the bottle, and tucks it carefully under Carmilla’s bed. Because it is Christmas Eve, and nobody should cry on Christmas Eve.

‘Hey,’ Laura mumbles, takes Carmilla’s hands, folds their fingers together.

‘Laura,’ Carmilla says, and it is at least two thirds sigh.

~

Carmilla falls asleep curled up on top of Laura, knees folded on either side of Laura’s stomach, her face buried in Laura’s chest. 

It is the smallest she has ever seemed. The youngest. 

Her back rises and falls with the movement of Laura’s chest, and for a moment, it is easy to think she is alive, and in love, and barely eighteen. For a moment, it feels like more than the truth.


	12. Day Twelve: Presents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last one... *wipes away single tear*
> 
> thanks for reading!
> 
> (for those who care, big things are coming. and I mean that quite literally.)

Laura wakes up far too hot, totally trapped under the weight of Carmilla. At some point during the night, they had both shifted so that Carmilla is now tangled on top of Laura, her head lolling to the side of Laura’s shoulder.

‘Carm,’ Laura grumbles, as she reaches over and grabs at her phone. And then, with a little more urgency, ‘Carm, get up. It’s afternoon already!’

Carmilla makes a sleepy noise of protest and rolls so she is curled up next to Laura.   
It is nearly two o’clock on Christmas day, which Laura thinks is really a waste. But with the heavy weight of Carmilla no longer right on top of her, she thinks she is inclined to stay for a little longer. 

There is a long pause, full of the slow slip of Laura’s socks against Carmilla’s sheets, and Carmilla’s mouth lazily pressed against her shoulder. 

She gives herself longer than she really should, before she pushes herself out of bed, flicks the radio on, starts picking through their shared closet for something a little cleaner to put on. 

‘Come on, Carm,’ she wheedles, reaching over to poke Carmilla where she is still a lump of bedsheets. ‘It’s Christmas, you have to get up some time.’

‘I really don’t,’ Carmilla mumbles.

‘Yeah, you do,’ Laura laughs.

‘Mmmmm, no,’ Carmilla tells her, but she’s sitting up now, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

‘Come on, get up. It can be my present, even.’ Laura smiles over her shoulder as she walks into the bathroom. 

‘Well as long as you aren’t expecting anything else,’ Carmilla tells her, and Laura just laughs.

 

(Later, Carmilla will hand her a small black box without looking her in the eyes.

Laura has no idea how much a bracelet like that would cost, isn’t even sure she wants to know. She is just so very glad that Carmilla cares. That what they have is important enough for blushes. 

Their crackly old radio is still playing in the background, and it makes the pauses in their conversation so much more beautiful.)


End file.
